Joss Allen
Current PhD student
Biography
Joss Allen can be found in the garden, amongst the weeds and compost heaps. He is an artworker and amateur gardener interested in how art influences ecological ways of being and practices of care towards more-than-human worlds. Joss's work has been influenced by his time as a support worker for adults with autism, a labourer on an organic farm and a refuse collector, among others. Between 2017 and 2020, they were the project coordinator for the Town is the Garden, a three-year creative community food-growing project run by Deveron Projects. Recently, he was co-artistic director of ATLAS Arts with Yvonne Billimore.
Supervisor(s)
Dr Nerea Calvillo (Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies)
Dr Claire Blencowe (Sociology)
Research overview
Tending to the seed commons – a study with Glasgow Seed Library
Research interests
Plant-human relations, ecological thinking and practices, food growing and foodways, political ecology, commons/commoning, alternative/community economies, anticapitalist politics, feminist theory, creative/curatorial practices and research.
Selected employment
Co-Artistic Director / Alternative Economies Manager (Nov 2021 – Nov 2022). ATLAS Arts, Scotland. With Yvonne Billimore. https://atlasarts.org.uk
Project Manager / Green Coordinator (2015–20). Deveron Projects, Scotland. https://www.deveron-projects.com
Publications and conference papers
Neimanis, A. et al. (2022) Feeling Worlds. Making Publics Press Issues 3. Joss Allen & Yvonne Billimore (eds.). Portree: ATLAS Arts. [online]. Available from: https://atlasarts.org.uk/assets/images/CHAPBOOK3_digital-final_LOWERDEF.pdf.
Gordon, C. et al. (2022) Food Economies. Making Publics Press Issues 2. Joss Allen & Yvonne Billimore (eds.). Portree: ATLAS Arts. [online]. Available from: https://atlasarts.org.uk/assets/images/GF_CHAPBOOK2ND_singlepage_11pt_INNER-PAGES_DIGITAL.pdf.
Gatt, Caroline, and Joss Allen. (2019) "Sketches for Regenerative Scholarship." Correspondences, Fieldsights, January 30. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/sketches-for-regenerative-scholarship
Peer Education, Teaching and Conferences
"Story seeds the garden" lecture (2023). MA Art and Social Practice, University of Highlands and Island.
"Seed Stories, Fugitive Ecologies" (2022). Glasgow Seed Library, CCA, Glasgow. Chair.
"Seeding economies of care: exploring seed-human relations towards developing caring communities for radical change" (2021). Eighth International Degrowth Conference, The Hague, Netherlands. Panel discussion with Katie Dow (University of Cambridge), Laura Pottinger (University of Manchester) and Ainslie Roddick (ATLAS Arts). Co-convened with Dr Rowan Lear (Glasgow Seed Library).
“The garden as a site of resistance and resilience” lecture and plant storying workshop (2020 and 2021). Environment Now: Healing Practices & Resilience Strategies. Visual Cultures, Curating & Contemporary Art Aalto University, Helsinki.
"Performance, Culture and Nutrition" (2019 and 2020) with Yvonne Billimore and Caroline Gatt. Masters of Gastronomy: Culture, Ecology and Education University of Gastronomic Sciences, Bra, Italy.
Architecture and Collective Life (2019). Architectural Humanities Research Association conference, University of Dundee. A roundtable organised by anthropologist Jo Vergunst (University of Aberdeen) on the ecological legacy of Patrick Geddes.
Funding and awards
Leverhulme Trust -TRANSFORM Doctoral Scholarship
Committee memberships and non-academic roles
Peak Cymru, board of directors.